Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) activated

BY JILL DUFFY

Adobe's 2012 update to its software line for design and creative professionals, Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) $638.97 at Leximart.com (prices vary; see below), brings new versions of all the most notable products: Photoshop, lllustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, Flash, and more. Some of the best improvements to the package are under the hood, with better performance and speed, although a few apps visually look different, too.

Other improvements suggest that Adobe has its eye trained on the specific problems digital designers face in terms of porting content to a variety of platforms and formats, like the iPad, Kindle Fire, and smartphones.

Although Adobe's never been stingy in bundling its software into a multitude of packages at different price points, the company has added one drastically different option for CS6 users: Creative Cloud (available May 11). Creative Cloud includes access to everything Adobe has to offer—no holds barred—as well as several exclusive online services, all starting from $49.99 per month. With Creative Cloud, you download and install the apps that you need with a membership-style license. It gives certain kinds of professionals (like freelancers and other project-based professionals) the short-term access they need to some of the apps at a fraction of the price of owning them.

As always with Adobe products, and therefore as to be expected, solo software components are expensive to buy (Photoshop costs $700), and the more affordable can eat up a lot of space. For example, the Design Standard bundle requires 7GB to 8.5GB available hard disk space for installation, plus 2GB or 1GB RAM to operate, for Mac and Windows, respectively. 

Nevertheless, Adobe Creative Suite 6 ensures cutting-edge designers have the tools they need to get their work done and publish it online, in print, and on all the major handheld gadgets, too. Adobe Creative Suite is an indispensible product line for pros. CS6 will keep them designing happily.

CS6 HighlightsHere is an overview of some notable changes in the most popular applications in Adobe CS 6. For more about each individual piece of software, click on its name.

Photoshop
5 stars, Editors' Choice$329.99 at SoftwareMediaDoes Photoshop CS6 perform better? Is it easier to work with? Yes and yes, two big reasons it scores a perfect five out of five stars. The new version will thrill nearly all categories of users, from photographers to designers. And the Extended edition now includes 3D editing. Adobe Photoshop CS6 adds 62 percent more new features than the previous version, including a speed boost and some jaw-dropping new "content aware" tricks. Photoshop's interface, too, gets a welcome upgrade, thanks to some trimming and clever improvements—although Adobe is careful to always offer the option to revert to the earlier look. The new UI uses a dark gray background, the darkness/lightness of which is customizable.

Another change is that Mini Bridge is clearly labeled (as opposed to "MB"), and runs along the bottom in a filmstrip view, which is much more useful than the extra right-panel it added previously. Less obvious is the thorough edit the interface itself has undergone to standardize spelling and grammar in all its messages and controls. Sticklers for consistency will be pleased indeed.

Illustrator
4.5 stars, Editors' Choice$379.99 at itdirectdealsLike Photoshop, vector-drawing app Illustrator remains at the top of its class in its latest incarnation, Adobe Illustrator CS6. Illustrator has the same new dark gray interface now found in Photoshop and other apps. The changes that are less visible are the most important: better speed, improved performance, and native 64-bit support for both Mac and Windows. Adobe also threw into this point release a few new requisite creative tools and features, though none of them are spectacular. A new "gradients on stroke" feature adds gradients to lines (nothing to get excited about there). The pattern-creation tool has a new tracing engine, as well as the ability to now create and edit tiled vector patterns, without any visible seams, from the images you trace.

InDesign
5 stars
$388.89 at itdirectdealsAdobe InDesign is the go-to application for page designers the world over, and the latest version goes to great lengths to help these pros keep pace with new trends in digital publishing. Adobe InDesign CS6 easily earns a perfect five-star rating and our Editors' Choice for its wonderful flexibility and creativity-boosting enhancements for designers. No one is saying InDesign is "perfect," but it's far better than it ever has been, and version CS6 pushes the software further in the right direction. Feature additions like Alternate Layouts, Liquid Layout, and Content Collector, speak to the demands of page designers who create for a variety of platforms. InDesign CS6 also offers vast upgrades with a new Linked content tool, as well as support for building interactive PDFs. As it stands in CS6, Adobe InDesign empowers page designers and graphic artists with a fantastic set of tools, a flexible work environment, and a keen sense of what will be important to them next.

Dreamweaver
4 stars, Editors' Choice
$268.89 at itdirectdealsAdobe Dreamweaver has dominated the Web-editing field for longer than most people can remember. Despite a few years' worth of interesting but ultimately uncompelling upgrade versions, Dreamweaver CS6  is different. It is an essential upgrade for anyone who wants to build Web pages or apps that automatically adapt when viewed in a smartphone's or tablet's browser, or on a laptop or desktop. Dreamweaver CS6 is the first Web editor built for the multiplatform era, with full support for HTML5 and CSS3. Like the rest of the CS6 suite, Dreamweaver is targeted to professionals who are willing to climb its steep learning curve, but even occasional coders can use it to build impressive-looking sites.

Premiere Pro
4 starsAdobe's Premiere Pro CS6 benefits from some interface tidying and a hardware acceleration boost, but longtime users won't be stunned by any drastic new changes, which is both good and bad. Those used to Premiere Pro will applaud the evolutionary approach that maintains familiarity, but the app pales in comparison to Final Cut Pro X ($299.99, 4.5 stars).

New in Premiere Pro CS6, you can now add and remove control buttons to taste, as well as undock and drag around windows to your heart's content. The media browser thumbnails can now be individually skimmed through by moving the mouse over them, and when you click on one, you get a scrubber bar and can mark in and out points right there, before you even insert the clip into your project. Premiere CS6 has a new way to insert clips into a sequence: just drag files from the OS's file system into the project. The media browser also has tabs for Effects, Markers, and History, the last of which can be helpful to get you back to a good spot if you mess up. Markers, too, have been improved, with the ability to attach notes and place multiple markers at the same time point.

There's no denying that Premiere Pro CS6 can do everything the professional video editor needs. Its easy integration with After Effects and Photoshop are definite boons. But when you compare it with the most recent version of Final Cut Pro X, which adds powerful multicam support and other feature pros need, Apple's product just feels more modern, fluid, and usable, which explains why it earns PCMag's Editors' Choice.

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